New Apartment

Posted byRandall 265 Comments on New Apartment

I’ve finally left Virginia and moved to Boston (the Cambridge-Somerville area). I’m really excited. I try to avoid the teenage-ish tendency to blame everything on wherever I am (“I just need to get out of this town! This place sucks! Hey, can you put on another Simple Plan CD?”). But I really think the Virginia town I lived in wasn’t my kind of place. So Boston’s going to be good. I feel at home here already (it helps that I have some lovely friends in the area). Hooray for things happening!

I put a whiteboard in the front hallway so everyone could leave notes and so forth. Hmm. A shared space that anyone can write/draw in …

I couldn’t help it:

(click for larger photo)

I’ve got some Sharpies in a drawer in case I need to lock it from editing.

265 replies on “New Apartment”

  1. You know, I absolutely love your comic, which is consistently entertaining and often brilliant.

    But this is just absolute genius. I hope your neighbors get it, and appreciate it. Thanks for sharing it with the great unwashed masses out here on the ‘tubes.

    Like

  3. I noticed you put dancing on your list, above even raptor-proofing the apartment! Clearly this is very important to you. Boston’s a great place to dance, and based on your comics, you might like the types of dances you can find on this web site: http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances=on&festivals=on&from=2007-6-5&until=2007-6-12&radius=20&near=cambridge%2Cma

    You can search based on date, location, style, and more. (It’s not my site, and they don’t pay me, I just think it’s cool). Give it a shot!

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  7. I did something similar to that once.
    I used to keep a diary (I only gave it up a couple of years ago) – and I drew on each page to look like a Blogger page.
    I only bothered to keep it up for a few weeks. Turns out I have even less interesting stuff to say when I know it’s just me reading.

    Like

  8. Welcome to Boston! It’s an awesome place to be.

    Also awesome: xkcd, which manages to be hilarious, insightful and (often) touching, all at once.

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  9. Wow… I’ve been a huge fan of the comic since darn near its beginning, and didn’t notice this blog until I StumbledUpon it today (well, technically, I stumbled upon someone who linked to this post, which link I then followed). That picture is pretty brilliant; so are, for that matter, the majority of the posts you’ve made so far. Nice work.

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  12. gotta love a new apartment with a great big white board.

    i hooked my dad on your webcomic, too. the only one he reads. (he’s told me for years he is told old for webcomics. HE’S A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER and he doesn’t read webcomics. i’m just sayin’. of course, my first computer used tapes, so i KINDA know how he feels. kinda)

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  13. I want to get rid of the capital A too, but I think “Penis Penis Penis” might be higher on my list of things to edit.

    From my limited exposure to both you and Cambridge, I think you’ll suit each other. I live in the Other Cambridge — the Old World species.

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  14. Bah. I keep doing this to the communal whiteboard in our living room, except you’ve done it better. And now, everyone who sees it will think that I’m imitating you. 😥

    But but but! Does your whiteboard have a writable surface on the back? If so, you should make it into the Talk page.

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  15. I was going to say…

    “That is a really funny thing to do and I felt it was funny enough that I should stop ghosting and start posting”

    But then I felt, really the people that will be reading this are of a different nature to those I normally meet and a short look into a thesaurus is needed…

    “That is very much a most riotous activity to perform, as such I realised it was humorous enough that I should cease to ghost and begin to post”

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  16. I think you’ve hit on an opportunity to make a few million bucks here. Sell a whiteboard branded by both Stephen Colbert and Wikipedia called “the Wikiboard” or “the Wikipedia Whiteboard.” Pre-print the MediaWiki template on the board, provide black (for text) and blue (for links) dry erase markers, magnets that are pre-printed with the templates (“{{unreferenced}}”, “{{pp-semi-protected}}”, etc.), and offer accessories like a digital camera to save revisions, a donation tray (“Your continued donations keep wikipedia running!”), and the option to have a Top 500 Wikipedia editor come revise your whiteboard for a nominal fee.

    What do you think?

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  20. 1. Welcome to my hometown. It’s a wonderful place and I never want to leave.

    2. Your spam protection is biased against liberal arts majors.

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  22. Aw. I’m sorry that you’ve left VA. Your presence here in the Old Dominion made us just that much cooler.

    Swing by Fairfax/Arlington or even DC someday?

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  24. Randall, this is absolutely wonderful. If I see such a thing in the middle of my normal routine, I think I would blow up laughing…

    Thanks for the inspiring look you give to things 🙂

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  26. please make a pic of the whiteboard each week so we can see it evolve(/devolve) 🙂

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  27. But honestly now, how long did you spend on that whiteboard, including design and implementation? It looks relatively involved.

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  28. Fantastic. In my high school days, a few years before Wikipedia launched, our physics teacher used to pair us up and ask us to work out problems on small whiteboards. Those that were the first to get the answer correct got to display their handiwork to the class.

    A friend and I always turned our board into a “white-browser,” complete with color graphics (well, depending on how many markers we could commandeer), navigation bar and advertising space. At first the ads were fake, but at one point a classmate paid us a whole nickel (!) for a 3″x3″ square on our board.

    Like

  29. Great to hear that you’ll be in the neighborhood. Makes September 23rd that much easier, huh?
    If you ever need recs on where to eat or drink, drop a line.

    Like

  30. Your blog is STILL not valid XHTML.

    Wait

    don’t tell me

    you left the “Valid XHTML” link as a joke. AH HA HA HA. MAN YOU’RE FUNNY.

    Like

  31. Welcome to cambridge! It’s pretty sweet in/around boston/cambridge.

    (ps. is it just me or do webcomics authors love massachusetts?)

    Like

  32. Pingback: blog on a stick › Wikipedia whiteboard

  36. FYI, Sharpies won’t keep it from being editable. If you scribble over sharpie ink with whiteboard markers and then erase it off…the sharpie ink will be gone.

    Or at least that’s how it works on my whiteboard. (Example: http://images.julisana.com/ellie/bills.jpg )

    I just thought you’d like to know so you can dink with your roommates. XD

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  38. “Get a webcam on that board. Hilarity ensues! Maybe!”

    that would be awesome

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  39. Finally in my department so Akismet doesn’t think I’m spam.

    Looks very college, that door. Too bad you’re coming to New England just as I’m heading to the Big Easy. Some day our paths shall cross and we shall drink until I can no longer remember Yoneda’s Lemma and you can’t remember.. whatever your drunk test is.

    Like

  40. If I lived in your building, all of the links would probably be smudged off from me trying to click them.

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  42. Here’s a question: How many marriage proposals have you gotten since the start of xkcd? Offers to carry your children? Requests to be your girlfriend? Free sex?

    Just trying to gage my competition, you see. 😉

    I kid! But, congrats on the move. Boston’s a great city. If you haven’t already, you should visit Shoenhof’s ( http://www.schoenhofs.com/ ), it’s language-geek heaven. (Speaking of which, there should definitely be more linguistics comics. Just sayin’.)

    Thanks for writing such a great webcomic!

    Like

  44. Allow me to be the nth person to welcome you to Middlesex county. Tips for living in the Cambridge-Somerville area: don’t drive Mass Ave between Harvard and Porter (it’s all lights); all roads lead to Punjabi Dhaba; Market Basket is vastly cheaper than Star; eat Wang’s; and when it doubt, park illegally in Cambridge, not Somerville – the ticket is cheaper.

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  45. maryr:

    Tips for living in the Cambridge-Somerville area: don’t drive Mass Ave between Harvard and Porter (it’s all lights)

    I didn’t bring my car, fortunately.

    when it doubt, park illegally in Cambridge, not Somerville – the ticket is cheaper.

    Learned that one when I last visited. We forgot about street sweeping 😦

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  46. I hope you will have some xkcd events over the summer because I won’t be here for September Xkcdstravaganza.

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  47. Pingback: xkcd Blog Archive New Apartment « Aiusepsi.co.uk
  48. Pingback: Life imitating web « Stajichlog

  50. You need to create a poster for today’s comic. I laughed mightily hard when I saw it, and I would buy a poster of this comic in an instant.

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